SCATHING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does scathing mean? 

• SCATHING (adjective)
  The adjective SCATHING has 1 sense:

1. marked by harshly abusive criticism

  Familiarity information: SCATHING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SCATHING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Marked by harshly abusive criticism

Synonyms:

scathing; vituperative

Context example:

her vituperative railing

Similar:

critical (marked by a tendency to find and call attention to errors and flaws)

 Context examples 

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)